Myerscough College 2002

Well of course there was much more going on at Myerscough College other than moving whopping great trees and building new blocks. I would end the year working my notice in preparation to joining JISC infoNet, my exploits during that employment are already open to scrutiny and the odd hilarity.

17 March 2002. I found myself (I think, for the last time) down at Coombe Lodge, venue for so many FEMIS courses in the 1990s.

Back then we had stayed in The Webbington hotel, a rather posh establishment where dinner was served at large communal round tables in the dining room. A refined lady with pearls and elaborate hair would play selections from (I swear) Watch With Mother on the piano and Rob Burnett would look across at the stuffed head of Bambi's mum on the wall, nudge me and say "Go on John - do the joke!"

The joke involved me drawing everyone's attention to the deer head and remarking "That thing must have been doing a hell of a lick when it hit that wall on the other side..." Never failed to bring a laugh... Why I'll never know. Rob and I once found ourselves seated after one meal with two very glamorous girls, far too young for us and with skirts far too short for keeping warm. They were absolutely gorgeous. One leaned forward slightly to ask, "So what do you think of this *%&*ing FEMIS then?" They had come from a very small specialised college and whilst one was the Principal's PA they were expected to also do all the work on the college's Management Information System. The other one was sitting thoughfully looking critically at her glass... "*%&*ing Vice Principal came upto me the other day and stuck his hand up my skirt, dirty sod!" she informed us. It was an enlightening evening... I remember the next day, which was the second of our 2-day course, the girls somehow learned how to do all sorts of tricks in the UNIX operating system to cause embarrassment to the VP...

This time I was staying at Coombe Lodge itself. Very boring as I was the only guest and I trotted off after arriving to have tea in Weston Super Mare which was just a few miles away. The following day after the course I went down to the nearby farmhouse where the FEMIS headquarters had been and the last few staff who had made the transfer to Capita were still working.

The programming team worked in the old stables and I went down to see Christina and her colleagues to make sure they had been properly mucked out... Happy days!

2002 was Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee. She had visited Myerscough College twice and they created a new space called Jubilee Court with a centrepiece of a 3D sculptured representation of the college logo, which was two ears of wheat set curving opposite each other. The sculpture set another two at right angles so they made four spokes or points of the compass (or ears of wheat...).

The college network was moving into the final phase of development with the instalation of new batch of managed network hubs which would be housed in a cabinet in the new build described in previous articles. On 20 May 2002 Jayne and I had another trip to Research Machines in Oxford to learn all about them and walked into this market just as the doors were locked at the far end. By the time we realised there were no stalls open the doors behind us had been locked as well. Luckily we found someone still in the place to let us out!

With similar luck we went to the Bodleian Library. We were unable to enter the library itself as there was some sort of graduation event going on.

In the courtyard stands King Charles I. In 1645 he was refused permission to borrow a book as the library's rule is not to allow books out of the building. It acts as a reference library only.

I got asked to contribute to another conference for NILTA and found myself on a platform with the head of a software company discussing whether paperless enrolments would ever become a reality. At the time the only thing holding this up was the Government's insistance that students should physically sign a form. Given that one college (there's always one...) had just made up a load of false students to fraudulently claim funding may have had some bearing on the Government's reluctance to allow digital signatures...

I also manned the NILTA stand at a local conference for North West colleges on 2 July 2002. About this time I received a strange telephone call one morning from a recruitment agency asking if I would be interested in a highly paid job for a national agency. They wouldn't disclose who it was but said that I had been specifically suggested as a likely candidate but that I would have to attend an interview that same day in York during the afternoon.

This was a deliberate ploy to see if I could actually do it and get there on time, whereupon I was told I had already passed several levels of criteria including being known to at least two currrent Government Ministers. (I've never been quiet in meetings or conferences, but as I've already mentioned somewhere, I never criticised without making positive suggestions for going forward.) The post turned out to be as head of an well known education support quango's Further Education arm. I later found lots of acquaintances doing similar work had also been approached and in the end I didn't get the job, but it was a very rewarding experience to go through.

Myerscough held a graduation ceremony and as a member of the support staff rather than academic, I found myself in red robes. Mick who I had worked with at Preston and subsequently brought to Myerscough to support me (and bypass me!) with programming of report output from the Management Information System took this photo from a low level. it emphasises the noble brow, the proud features, the double chin...

The ceremony was held over two days, one for Higher Education students and one for Further Education students. On each day a guest was invited to do a speech and to hand out the certificates. On the second day I was quite pleased to shake the hand and chat to Lord Brian Rix, the famous actor from the Whitehall Farces and then acting as President of MENCAP. "I've seen you before," I told him, "...but I doubt if you'll remember!"

It was a touching experience that day, I had no teaching duties but occasionally spent time with students to help them over an I.T. problem and some of those who I'd spent time with made a special effort to come and say thanks.

In August a new Business Incubator building was planned and an old barn had to come down to make way for it. This would change the road plan of the college also. By now I had gotten involved, again through NILTA, with a project to set up a new Advisory Service for JISC. JISC was a committee at the time, not an organisation, so all its staff were employed by various universities around the UK. The University of Northumbria at Newcastle would be hosting this new service which would support Information Systems and development, planning and implementation of I.T. use within colleges and universities.

With the opening of the new building featured in the previous couple of articles, a new I.T. drop-in centre was opened. The old one still existed but from 60 total PCs, we had now added this - a considerable achievement but which matched in terms of percentages the growth in student numbers over the past two years or so. Use of the Internet was expanding rapidly and demanding far greater computing power than was even envisioned when I started at Myerscough in 1999.

Use of images in particular had gone from almost zero to unbelievable in that time - we had software to help, but policing access to pornography on the Network was a necessary and onerous task. The reluctance of teaching staff to discipline students, leaving it to us to "ban" them temporarily from the network was an annoying - and completely useless - imposition. I argued with management over this but they said it was all they could do. This is what would happen: Despite my protests that my staff were not policemen, judge and jury, I had one young student, not the most intelligent, sent to me so I could block his access to the network. He had been looking at porn whilst seated next to a girl student and some rather unsavoury noises had resulted from what he was doing...

Sternly I made him tell me why he had been sent to me. "I was looking at porn, sir!" he admitted readily with a huge grin. "Well, I've got to take away your access to computers for the next two weeks so you are going to fall behind on your work unless you have computer access at home!" I waited for his response. "Yes I know, Sir!" Still grinning... "So what will you do now?" I asked still trying to be stern, but knowing I just wasn't getting through to him that he shouldn't think of continuing to not only watch porn at college but do it openly whilst enjoying it to the full, in front of other students female or male. "Oh, I'm going to borrow my mate's password!" Total waste of time. Teachers and management, do not do this to your busy I.T. staff!

26 November 2002. At Hinckley, near Leicester for the Ferl conference on a stand for the recently announced new service JISC infoNet. Ferl if I remember rightly - someone will correct me if I'm wrong - stood for Further Education Resources for Learning and was a joint project involving the National Learning Network and Becta and possibly more (Someone help me out here!)

Also at this conference were a couple of respected colleagues: Keith Duckett of the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) and John Bushnell of the Department for Education and Science (DFES). I always used to say it wasn't a proper conference unless you found out a couple of PUAs (Previously Unknown Acronyms)...

The weather threw up more floods again in 2002. It was time (if not already past time) to start taking this Global Warming thing seriously. The hand rail in the photo is that of a bridge over a stream...

As a writer and especially as a writer of (hopefully) good advice, it's always nice to get the occasional bit of feedback that proves that what you are doing is of some use or interest to someone. In one issue of NILTA's newsletter/magazine in 2002 there was a letter from a relieved member of staff from the University of Illinois in America who had struggled with a problem and found the answer in an article that I had published. I was quick to point out that the solution to his problem had been discovered by Jayne, not by me!

The new JISC infoNet was given the green light and one dark night on 27 November 2002 I found myself driving over to Newcastle dodging snowflakes, swooping owls, the ghosts of Roman Auxilliaries from Hadrian's Wall and large lorries on small roads over the Pennines for a formal interview to become a member of staff. As I gave in my one month's notice, Myerscough was hit with a notice that HM Inspectors would be visiting the day after I left... They negotiated with JISC to extend my notice for a further month and I would join the University of Northumbria at the end of January instead of the beginning.

As the new job would entail lots of travelling about the four countries of the UK, I didn't really want to uproot my family to the North East and then just leave them there whilst I went off all over the place so we negotiated to rent an office at Myerscough College with Internet access etc. whilst I would go over to Newcastle regularly for meetings and so on. Myerscough would have me available if needed. (I can't remember it happening - no matter how indisensable you may think you are and indeed may be, the cracks don't begin to show until you have been gone long enough for people not to associate them with you.) Besides, I was pleased when Jayne secured a promotion to the vacancy I left and I knew they were in good hands. Mick too had already acquired greater knowledge than I had had time to keep up with regarding new web-based languages to interrogate the college student and finance systems.

Despite the obvious advantages of sharing some information from HR systems - teaching timetables; deletion of access when staff left employment etc. - in both colleges and universities HR systems were never ever allowed to be accessed even by programmers who would only draw the necessary data out of the system without anyone else being able to see any other details. I suspect more because of dire warnings by software house training events than anything else, HR systems were installed within barbed wire, concrete gun emplacements and the excuse of, but with little understanding of, the Data Protection Act. It is not there to stop your organisation from working efficiently. The times I heard "Well people could see what the Principal was paid!" - yes... you mean the same as any CEO whose salary has to be published in publicly available Annual Reports?

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